Devemos continuar a escrever histórias da literatura?

Abstract

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s essay aims to answer the title question through five steps: first, it presents a brief history of the emergence of literary studies as an academic discipline; secondly, it describes how literary history emerged as a discursive possibility; thirdly, Gumbrecht demonstrates how the golden age of literary history towards the end of nineteenth century coincides with the emergence of literary theory as a subfield of literary studies as a discipline. On the fourth step, the author demonstrates how, during the final decades of twentieth century, the very type of historicity that was the basis of literary history was questioned, which leads us back to the last part of this essay: in that context “shall we continue to write histories of literature?”